Home Improvementish, Part Two

July 23, 2012

So first of all, this:

KEGGER IN THE DINING ROOM, GUYS. ALSO HELP YOURSELF TO SOME TOAST.

In what is officially the slowest-moving, most-procrastinated kitchen makeover EVER, we finally got around to painting the damn walls this weekend. It tooks us several more weeks to decide on a color, and then...I don't know. The decision took a lot out of us. We had to lie down for awhile. Or a month.

And then we also painted the dining room, getting rid of the gloomy blood-red half-wall that I once declared would be "the first thing to go" when we moved in. (Six years ago.) (But who's counting?)

Anyway, as much as I would LOVE to show you photos of the finished rooms, it should come as no surprise that...uh...we're still a day or two away from putting shit back in its place and stuff.

Plus I need time to recover from the trip to Ikea that I took by myself, with Noah and Ezra, in search of cabinet handles, only to find that Smaland was over capacity and the wait was at least an hour. And whatever, I'm just here for cabinet handles and that will take 10 minutes so I'll just take the kids into Ikea with me, it'll be fine.

Two hours (plus 26 cabinet handles, one desk lamp and a medicine cabinet for the guest bathroom) later, my toe had swollen to the size of an EKTORP, I'd run out of privileges to revoke and lives to threaten and my children had loudly and officially declared me to be the meanest mommy in the entire world.

And then I came home and accidentally threw myself against a freshly-painted doorjam in a dramatic NEVER AGAIN flourish.

All in all, a ragingly productive weekend for me, as long as you set the bar low, like at NOT DYING as the baseline criteria for success and moving up from there.

Comments

Oh. Urk. And...ouch. And this is why home improvement projects should never be attempted. I'll point to this post as the reason when I'm asked when I'm going to finish the basement. Too dodgy man. Too. Dodgy.

Ok, there seriously needs to be an Ikea app that tells you when Smaland is at or nearing capacity so you can just circle the parking lot till space becomes available. Someone smarter than me get on that!

Hmmm. I too have broken a toe by jamming it on our vacuum...twice. Two different toes. And our housemate is a house cleaner by profession and just came home with a broken toe having jammed it on a vacuum. I think the vacuums are rising up and taking over. One broken toe at a time.

Stupid IKEA. I still have PTSD from taking a colicky newborn there alone. Did you know that an infant car seat does not fit in any manner in their giant carts? Colicky infant thrashed around so mightily as to fling her whole carseat off the top of the cart, where it was precariously balanced at 137 degrees on a half-tilt. Had to carry infant in one arm and push massive Hümmer cart with one hand, spraining wrist. Hate you, IKEA.

However, someday when you're asked if you had a productive day, and you're like, "Eh. Not really," they'll hang there head and look greatly embarrassed, and say, "I'm really sorry. I didn't know." And you'll be like, "Wha?" and they'll give you a big, un-asked for hug and look soberly into your eyes and say, "You are SO strong. But really. If there's anything, ANYTHING I can do, promise you'll let me know." And they'll beat a quick retreat.

Sympathy for your toe pain, but it's nice to know I'm not the only who gets injured doing home renovations. We just gutted our bathroom, a job that was supposed to take a week has, unsurprisingly, morphed into three. During which I stabbed myself in the palm requiring an ER trip. Even though it happened while prying the pit from an avocado, I'm totally blaming on power tools.